None of this is to suggest that Maher Zain’s work caused demonstrations or the trials of former Egyptian officials, but Zain’s songs
clearly reflected a widespread feeling of discontent and a desire for a different future. His awareness of that discontent and of the need for hope is
an element of his popularity—epitomized by an Egyptian fan at his Cairo concert in March 2010 who was quoted saying that she loved
the “revolutionary feel” of his music.
Zain tapped into this same feeling of discontent and the need for hope in the first song he released after the start of the Arab Spring,
“Freedom.” He premiered the song in Malaysia in March 2011 and dedicated it to peoples fighting for freedom in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and
all other countries. Sung in English, the song thanks God for giving friends and neighbors—young, old, women, and men— strength to hold
hands and demand an end to oppression. The song enunciates a dream for a new Muslim society, in which people will no longer be prisoners in their homes
or be afraid to voice their opinions in public. While Zain acknowledges that the dream of a new society has yet to be fulfilled, he promises his
listeners that they are on the verge of achieving it, that God is with them, and that He will not let them fail. Throughout the video of the song, we
see images of Arab flags and protestors peacefully challenging their governments in the Arab World.
Significantly, Zain’s call for reform extends to the United States. In “The Chosen One” we see Zain singing about the Prophet
Muhammad while walking through Bakersfield, California. According to the website of Zain’s record label, Awakening Records, the video is intended
to educate the world about the Prophet Muhammad and to respond to attacks on him through cartoons and on Facebook. In a striking scene, we see a young
boy with a baseball cap and glove race across a living room and catch a baseball thrown to him by his veiled mother. The city is filled with social
problems: homelessness, alcohol and drug addiction, impoverished elderly, abandoned animals, and ethnic tensions. (In the opening scene, Zain’s
neighbor, a blonde white woman, dumps garbage on his front porch.) Yet, up until the concluding scene, it is not Zain who addresses these problems:
others do. Finally, however, Zain notices that his unfriendly neighbor is sick. He makes vegetable soup for her. Zain is of course displaying his
compassion and humanity here, but he is also invoking a well-known story about the Prophet Muhammad. For years a woman dumped garbage on his home until
one day it stopped. Rather than rejoicing, the Prophet sought to see what had happened to the woman and offered to help her when he realized that she
was sick.
The Prophet Muhammad and the hope he offers the world are central to Zain’s second video shot in the United States, “Ya Nabi Salam
Alayka,” which is set for its official premiere this week. In it we see Zain sporting his trademark dapper hat and hip-hop clothes while walking
through the major streets and railroad tracks of one of America’s premier cities, the hometown of President Barack Obama: Chicago, Illinois. He
is flanked by the city’s famous skyline and he sings a salutation in Arabic to the Prophet Muhammad—a salutation widely known as salawat. By choosing a city that is in many ways at the center of the nation’s geography and nizam, Zain is implying that Muslims
and their faith have something tangible to contribute to the world’s lone superpower—despite the ongoing presence of Islamophobia in American life.